Comments on: Comics: A Beginner’s Guide: Hernandez Brothers

By: wedge

wedge — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:41:01 +0000

I used to love Love and Rockets – but sometime around the 90s it started to leave me cold, especially Gilbert’s stuff. When he started overdoing the anti-imperialist polemic and throwing in serial killers, I think the acclaim was going to his head (is it just me or did his art get a lot uglier as well?). Check out his arrogant interview comments in recent years. The comics lost a lot of the charm and wit that won us over in the first place. I actually preferred it with more punk and SF elements – I can watch police brutality, racism, poverty, and bisexual girls getting fat in everyday life, thank you very much!

I suppose comics are still so low on the artistic food chain that any creator getting a lot of acclaim starts to let it go to his head too easily – see also Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Chris Ware, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman and Dan Clowes. If they’re not embarassing us with big (but obvious) ‘statements’ they’re either running to Hollywood or indulging messianic delusions. It’s only comics, guys!

By: The Dirty Vicar

The Dirty Vicar — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:15:53 +0000

I don’t know if the old Fantagraphics Love & Rockets collections are still in print (they are all titled “Love & Rockets – [Title]“), but I find them a more manageable way of reading L&R stuff than the big volumes that have come out more recently.

By: Martin Skidmore

Martin Skidmore — Sun, 25 May 2008 11:59:54 +0000

I largely agree – I haven’t been captivated by their stories in a good while now. I do recommend catching up on the earlier stories – for a start, they are magnificent, very possibly the best comics of the last few decades, but also they might make some of the newer Gilbert stories mean more.

By: Dan M.

Dan M. — Sun, 25 May 2008 03:57:28 +0000

Good write-up, Martin. I haven’t read the big collections of L&R — I discovered it about half-way though the first run, so I don’t have the chronological perspective in terms of the decline in Jaime’s work. I wonder what you think of the current series of L&R comic books? Personally, I find the artwork of both brothers maintains its high level, but Gilbert’s characters and situations leave me either confused or simply un-engaged (with some exceptions, usually shorter pieces, like the suberb “Julio’s Day” in — it was either #1 or 2. To some extent I feel the same about Jaime — some fantastic individual stories, but the overall arcs have become only sporadically gripping. For me the brothers’ work is ALWAYS worth looking at, but too often not a great READING experience.